Phillips Thursday Thoughts
March 29, 2018
We are paddling along...
I hope you all enjoy your Easter with your family. It's our last break before the end of school so make your day count. :)
What's Ahead...
April 3- Team Discovery Field Trip, 5:30-7:30 Latino Family Literacy Project
April 4- 4th grade Super Hero Writing Camp, staff may wear jeans with superhero shirts
April 6- T-TESS Domain 4 data due in Strive
April 10- 4th grade STAAR Writing, pizza lunch provided by Sunshine for staff
April 11- Summatives begin, 4:00 Teacher meeting
April 13- Spring/Group Pictures
April 18- SST meetings, 4th grade GT day, 4:00 Meet and Greet with 18-19 staff at all three schools
April 19- Thompson/Blake Field Trip
April 20- 3rd grade GT day, 4th grade(13 classes) Field Trip to Caldwell Zoo
Happy Birthday!
April 25- Holly McDonald
Just a great "feel good story" during March Madness...
Coach K shook this man's hand before every home game...
You may never have known his name but his face may well be familiar, if you’ve ever watched a Duke men’s basketball game in Cameron Indoor Stadium anytime in the past 37 years.
Because every time broadcast cameras inevitably panned onto Coach Mike Krzyzewski sitting, standing or screaming on the sidelines of a Cameron-played game, Steven “Steve” Lee Mitchell was right there, sitting behind him.
Guards, forwards and centers, assistant coaches and trainers have all come and gone throughout the Coach K-era but Mitchell was always there, sitting and watching, cheering and cursing along with “Coach” through nearly all of it.
Mitchell, of Durham, was born with Down Syndrome on Sept. 5, 1954, and died June 4.
“He learned some words from Krzyzewski Momma and Daddy didn’t like to hear,” his brother, Crafton Mitchell, said. “He had trouble pronouncing some of them. He said ‘Dodd-mn it!’”
But Crafton Mitchell said, after witnessing a turnover, his brother, “Steve,” could holler a long, protracted ‘Sh---t’ as good as anyone else.
Coach K – who, enters the arena to deafening cheers, flanked-by serious-faced men in suits as Cameron’s Crazies pay homage – walked over to 5-foot, 2-inch Mitchell and shook his hand every time for three decades.
“I think it was a mutual feeling,” Mitchell’s sister, Janice King, said of her brother’s and Coach K’s ritual, game-day shake. “I think they gained strength from each other.
“I cannot speak for Coach K,” she added.
“Steve became a good friend, one who had some challenges. He was loved deeply by his family. It always felt good shaking his hand before games because I admired him and was proud of him,” Coach Krzyzewski wrote in an email. “Steve never asked for anything. He just wanted be to down there to support us. I always felt like he had my back. That felt good.”
In the winter of 1980 the only thing Mitchell wanted for Christmas was a Duke basketball ticket. As a new coach spurred new life into Blue Devil fandom, the demand for tickets rose, making them hard to find.
But Mitchell’s brother ran a construction and restoration company with a job that winter to fix up that new coach’s house.
Working on the Krzyzewskis’ home, Crafton Mitchell asked the coach how one might find a purchasable ticket and explained his brother’s Christmas wish.
“He can sit behind me,” Kryzewski said. Mitchell got a ticket, behind the bench.
The following season, 1981-82, Mitchell sent Coach K a handwritten letter saying, “Coach, I know we’re going to have another great year. I was hoping that I could sit near you again.”
Coach K wrote Mitchell back a handwritten letter saying that, “yes,” he could.
The coach and Mitchell exchanged nearly the same letters every season thereafter. A single ticket, reserved for one “Steve Mitchell,” has always awaited pickup at Will Call before every game.